4850 CF vs. 4870

CardboardSword

CardboardSword

New Member
I currently have a 4850 as per my sig, and for my new build, I was simply planning on putting another one in. After many a headache hunting through motherboards and newegg, I noticed a few things that piqued my interest. Firstly, since I'm going "cheap", most motherboards in my price range that have 2x PCI-E scale down to dual 8x, which I'm not sure how seriously, if at all it would affect mid-range cards like mine. Then I noticed that freaking newegg.ca screwed around with their prices again and a 1Gb 4870 is only ten bucks more than my 512mb 4850 that I was looking at. Same brand, same cooler, all that good jazz. So now my question is what route do I take? They always say "Oh well then you can run them in CF later down the road"...Is now down the road? Or should I start saying that with my new build and the 4870?:P Power isn't going to be an issue, nor is heat (That's due to the pricier cards:(, worth it IMO though, I'm a stickler for temps) Also, how much will the (2)8x lanes affect performance? On the 4850's? On the 4870's down the road? (maybe)
 
For 8x on two 4850's, not a whole lot. Your cpu is gonna bottleneck you though, especially with even just one 4870, and especially two 4850's. Might wanna think about upgrading to a phenom II based platform or so..
 
If you do decide to upgrade, you can always grab a 4870 and run it in crossfire with the 4850, the 4870 will clock to mirror the 4850.
8x won't be much an issue if at all.
Like bomberboysk said though, your cpu is a major bottleneck.
 
Yeah, wasn't planning on keeping this rig, if you'll carefully read my first sentence again.:P Thanks for the replies though. I'm leaning towards the 4870 I think, assuming the prices stay in the same ballpark until I gather my funds.

C'mon guys, give me a little bit of credit.:P
 
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CardboardSword said:
Yeah, wasn't planning on keeping this rig, if you'll carefully read my first sentence again.:P Thanks for the replies though. I'm leaning towards the 4870 I think, assuming the prices stay in the same ballpark until I gather my funds.

C'mon guys, give me a little bit of credit.:P
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I cant, i dont work for the bank:P I thought you were referring to getting a new 775 motherboard, so my bad.
 
CardboardSword said:
Wouldn't that be a waste of a 4870 though? Wouldn't the stronger card downclock itself to the weaker? I thought that's how it went.
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Ya thats right, waste of money combining a more powerful card with a less powerful one, crossfire will lower the card specs of the higher card down to the lower one.
 
CardboardSword said:
Wouldn't that be a waste of a 4870 though? Wouldn't the stronger card downclock itself to the weaker? I thought that's how it went.
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You said it was $10 more? Yes it will downclock, and only use 512mb of memory. But for $10 more, you'll have the option to replace the 4850 with at 4870 later on.
Eskimow said:
Ya thats right, waste of money combining a more powerful card with a less powerful one.
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For $10 more, waste of money?
 
Gotcha, I was leaning towards getting the 4870 and just selling the 4850 while its still a potent card, but never really thought of Xfiring the two different cards, sounds like a plan to me. Thanks muchly
 
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